I am amazed by how impulsive most of the comments are to the idea. First it was AOL and general sentiment was, well they're a crap company anyway so it's expected from them, they don't care about customers and want to profit. After Yahoo's name was mentioned the rage started to tone down.
It seems clear to me that this is by far the most efficient way of reducing spam. Spam represents today over 80% of all email traffic. An average spammer earns $1000 for 2 million messages sent (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123597, 00.asp), i.e. he makes 0.0005 cents per email. If AOL or however else charges 0.5c/email that translates into $10,000/2,000,000 messages which means that a spammer would lose $9000. Ultimately is pretty simple math, if it costs more to send a spam email that money you make from it then you won't do it.
It may be that 1c/email is not necessary, and companies could see the same effect by charging 0.01c/email. This will not bankrupt anyone. You can send 1000 messages for 10 cents. The benefits would be enormous: huge decrease in spam sent, less time spent keeping up spam filters, less time deleting spam. Jupiter research reports that in 5 years the average user will be exposed to 830 marketing impressions/day, double of the number today (http://www.jupitermedia.com/corporate/releases/02 .09.24-spamreport.html). I don't take these numbers too seriously, but I believe the trend is that spam is increasing because it's the cheapest way to advertise.
I don't believe at all that "even" AOL is trying to profit from spammers or consumers. The benefit they would get from 80% less email immensely greater than revenue from charging a fraction of a cent per email. I know for sure that this solution was also discussed at Google because it's so effective in stopping spam, but the even bigger issue than initial public backlash, is how to handle micro payments. A credit card company charges a few cents per transaction so for a value amount of 1c you pay the cost many times more in transaction fees (just for that and AOL and Yahoo won't be making any money from this). Having cheap way of handling micro payments without losing money on fees is almost impossible in the current system. Credit card companies can't do it, Paypal can't do it, Google can't do it. Google will lower the cost of micro transactions but anything less that 10-50c will still be unprofitable.
At the same time having to pay for email is also a huge disadvantage for spammers. Money has to come from an real account and that is infinitely easier to trace than an email account. Anonymity of spammers will be much more difficult to hide and that is a huge deal. Of course, so will be anonymity of everybody else but that is a separate discussion.
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I am amazed by how impulsive most of the comments are to the idea. First it was AOL and general sentiment was, well they're a crap company anyway so it's expected from them, they don't care about customers and want to profit. After Yahoo's name was mentioned the rage started to tone down.
It seems clear to me that this is by far the most efficient way of reducing spam. Spam represents today over 80% of all email traffic. An average spammer earns $1000 for 2 million messages sent (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123597, 00.asp), i.e. he makes 0.0005 cents per email. If AOL or however else charges 0.5c/email that translates into $10,000/2,000,000 messages which means that a spammer would lose $9000. Ultimately is pretty simple math, if it costs more to send a spam email that money you make from it then you won't do it.
It may be that 1c/email is not necessary, and companies could see the same effect by charging 0.01c/email. This will not bankrupt anyone. You can send 1000 messages for 10 cents. The benefits would be enormous: huge decrease in spam sent, less time spent keeping up spam filters, less time deleting spam. Jupiter research reports that in 5 years the average user will be exposed to 830 marketing impressions/day, double of the number today (http://www.jupitermedia.com/corporate/releases/02 .09.24-spamreport.html). I don't take these numbers too seriously, but I believe the trend is that spam is increasing because it's the cheapest way to advertise.
I don't believe at all that "even" AOL is trying to profit from spammers or consumers. The benefit they would get from 80% less email immensely greater than revenue from charging a fraction of a cent per email. I know for sure that this solution was also discussed at Google because it's so effective in stopping spam, but the even bigger issue than initial public backlash, is how to handle micro payments. A credit card company charges a few cents per transaction so for a value amount of 1c you pay the cost many times more in transaction fees (just for that and AOL and Yahoo won't be making any money from this). Having cheap way of handling micro payments without losing money on fees is almost impossible in the current system. Credit card companies can't do it, Paypal can't do it, Google can't do it. Google will lower the cost of micro transactions but anything less that 10-50c will still be unprofitable. At the same time having to pay for email is also a huge disadvantage for spammers. Money has to come from an real account and that is infinitely easier to trace than an email account. Anonymity of spammers will be much more difficult to hide and that is a huge deal. Of course, so will be anonymity of everybody else but that is a separate discussion.